The gardens were beautifully kept. Everything was mathematically straight and clean, almost luxurious, indeed. The girls were three in number, young, fashionably dressed. They talked without ceasing in an empty-headed stream of girlish chatter. They were the daughters of a great ironfounder in the district, and would each have a hundred thousand pounds. The chaplain was showing them over the asylum. "How sweet of you, Mr. Pritchard, to show us everything!" said one of the girls. "It's awfully thrilling. I suppose we shall be quite safe from the violent ones?" "Oh, yes," said the chaplain, "you will only see those from a distance; we keep them well locked up, I assure you." The girls laughed with him. The party went laughing through the long, spotless corridors, peeping into the bright, airy living-rooms, where bodies without brains were mumbling and singing to each other. The imbecile who moved vacantly with slobbering lip, the dementia patient, the log-like, general paralytic--"G. P."--_things_ which must be fed, the barred and dangerous maniac, they saw them all with pleasant thrills of horror, disgust, and sometimes with laughter. "Oh, Grace, _do_ look at that funny little fat one in the corner--the one with his tongue hanging out! Isn't he _weird_?" "There's one actually _reading_! He _must_ be only pretending!" A young doctor joined them--a handsome Scotchman with pleasant manners. For a time the lunatics were forgotten. "Well, now, have we seen _all_, Doctor Steward?" one of the girls said. "All the worst cases? It's really quite a new sensation, you know, and I always go in for new sensations." "Did ye show the young leddies Schuabe?" said the doctor to the chaplain. "Bless my soul!" he replied, "I must be going mad myself. I'd quite forgotten to show you Schuabe." "Who is Schuabe?" said the youngest of the sisters, a girl just fresh from school at Saint Leonards. "Oh, _Maisie_!" said the eldest. "Surely you remember. Why, it's only five years ago. He was the Manchester millionaire who went mad after trying to blow up the tomb of Christ. I think that was it. It was in all the papers. A young clergyman found out what he'd been trying to do, and then he went mad--this Schuabe creature, I mean, not the clergyman." "Every one likes to have a look at this patient," said the doctor. "He has a little sleeping-room of his own and a special attendant. His money was all confiscated by order of the Government, but they allow two hundred a year for him. Otherwise he would be among the paupers." The girls giggled with pleasurable anticipation. The doctor unlocked a door. The party entered a fairly large room, simply furnished. In an arm-chair a uniformed attendant was sitting, reading a sporting paper. The man sprang up and saluted as he heard the door open. On a bed lay the idiot. He had grown very fat and looked healthy. The features were all coarsened, but the hair retained its colour of dark red. He was sleeping.